A little breath of Leorai, for those who enjoy it :)

Chapter 20 – Retaliations

"The first rule of being a ninja is, 'Do no harm'. Unless you mean to do harm. Then do lots of harm."
Splinter, I Think His Name is Baxter Stockman
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The Foot's brutal attack on Donatello would be answered for. A message would be sent that this and any future attacks on the Hamato Clan would have permanent, and deeply regretful, consequences.

While not all the brothers agreed on the best message to send (and Splinter had no opinion because no one had told him about the plan) the consensus was that which Leo was preparing to personally deliver. Among the Turtles, he felt particularly, irrationally guilty and responsible for Donnie's life-threatening injuries. Perhaps because he was the least involved in all the events leading to Don's ambush.

Appropriately enough, the work would be done in Donnie's lab. Silently, Leo pushed aside one of the heavy metal doors and entered, gingerly carrying a small box of supplies. He glanced at his brother, comatose, on the bed. The sight hammered and folded Leo's resolve into even stronger steel.

Not wanting to reach his hand inside the box, Leonardo gently tipped its contents out across a relatively uncluttered worktable.

From the scatter, Leo cautiously picked up the poison dart that Don had fortuitously dropped into his satchel for future study. The dart's case held most of the lethal toxin, which had failed to discharge into Donnie's bo. There was enough in the dart to kill Karai twice over. A comforting thought.

Squinting, Leo reflected on choices and consequences, and the compromise the brothers had struck.

Without Don there for guidance, Leo could only mimic what he'd seen his brother do umpteen times when handling mutagen, contagions and other biosafety hazards.

He put on one of Donnie's lab coats. The thick poly-cotton felt claustrophobic to Leo. The Turtles' hands were too large for conventional disposable gloves, but when necessary, Donnie managed with a box of extra-extra-large vinyl ones. Leo double-gloved as best he could. Then, he flipped the "on" switch of the metal biosafety cabinet that Don had rigged to draw air into the cabinet, through a HEPA filter, and out to ceiling pipes that emptied into a distant sewer tunnel and the outside world.

Protective gear on, Leo put the dart, a 50 ml tube of saline solution, some muscle relaxant tablets, and a small pair of pliers into a smaller box that he carried to the biosafety cabinet. Leo slid the cabinet's plexiglass shield up enough to place the box inside, and somewhat comfortably move his arms around the air-filtered space.

He used the pliers to unscrew the poison-cartridge from the dart. Then he removed the rubber stopper that fed the needle and plugged the cartridge. Carefully, from the cartridge he poured the poison into a heavy plastic waste disposal canister that Don kept in the hood for this sort of toxic job.

Now the cartridge was empty of poison but for nanoliters than clung to the container walls.

Leo unscrewed five of the over-the-counter tablets and tapped their contents into the cartridge. Slowly, he filled it almost to the top with saline solution. Then he replaced the rubber stopper and wiped off the cartridge's surface, throwing the soiled lab-grade wipes into the waste container.

Leo stepped back from the biosafety cabinet, removed his box of supplies, and shut everything down. He held the cartridge up to the light: the saline was tinged sickly yellow. Most of the muscle relaxant drug was dissolved. Leo gently shook the tube for half a minute, to dissolve everything into solution.

Back at Donnie's worktable, Leo replaced the cartridge into the dart's syringe casing and oh-so-carefully screwed the needle back into place. Then he capped the needle. And stared at what he'd just made. And thought about what it represented.

It was time to go topside.

…

For all the nights that he'd patrolled across the city, Leo never got tired of the crisp evening air, the beaming moon, the bright smear of stars, the –

"Well. Leonardo. I wouldn't have expected to find you up here, alone, at a time like this."

Karai posed on the edge of the building's roof, hand-on-cocked-hip, a cliché of herself.

"A time like what, Karai?" Leo played dumb, wanting to gauge her reaction to his brother's attack. Wanting to know how much of it really was her doing, her choice.

"Oh, maybe I misheard", Karai spoke lightly, "I thought that you had a brother down." Turning her side towards Leo, she narrowed her eyes and dropped her voice. "Such a shame, for the Hamato Clan".

Leo stood silently, watching his gorgeous, lethal nemesis glide from the roof's edge towards him.

Stopping a few feet from Leonardo, Karai asserted: "I'm sure you'll all bounce back. You always seem to, no matter what Father throws your way."

Leo flipped back, "It was an interesting plan, your Father designed. Funny that he wasn't in town to witness the outcome of a particularly egregious attack on our family."

Karai set her jaw.

Leo probed further. "One might think – maybe you were acting on your own. Maybe there's less love lost between you and The Shredder than I thought. There certainly seems to be no love lost between you and me."

"Oh, Leonardo", spat Karai, shaking her head in disgust and began to slowly prowl around the blue-banded Turtle. "So naïve. What do you know about love? Let me tell you: Love will rend your soul from your body and, while you watch incredulous, weak-kneed and slack-jawed, love will snack on your soul, bit by bit. And then tongue out the gooey centre. Love will lick your gore from its sticky fingers while it stares at you with a shit-eating grin, as though, by decimating you, love just did you a favour. And the insane thing? Is that you will beg for the opportunity to be abused by love. All. Over. And Over. Again."

Oh my god, thought Leonardo, but Karai could be tedious and narcissistic. Her diary entries were probably her most lethal weapon. He realized that a smoother segue and a clearer invitation couldn't exist.

"Then let me find out for myself, right now", he husked.

Brashly, Leo stepped into Karai, wrapped his large hand around the back of her skull to secure her head, and crushed his lips against hers. Just as her mind shifted from shock to arousal, she felt the icy splinter of the metal dart slip into her vein.

Karai's world disintegrated to black, darker than her most clandestine journaling.

…

For the sake of dramatic impact, Leo would have liked to have delivered Karai to The Shredder's throne room; but it would have been insanity to risk entry. Instead, he hastily laid her limp form on the Foot's doorstep. As if leaving a hellish newborn to a bad home, he tucked a hand-printed note under the neck of her breastplate. The simple text read, "If my brother dies, then I'll finish the job."

It seemed laughable to ring the Foot's doorbell and run away, but that was the only option open to Leo. Que sera sera. He assumed that someone in a building full of ninja would hear the chime, if they didn't already sense an intruder on their premises.

Leo pushed the bell, and vanished into the shadows, not looking back, simply sliding into The Below of New York City to be with his family, again, as they grieved and fought to save themselves.

As ever and always: thank you for reading! XD